Just Once

by Addison Fox

  Landon seemed to do his level best to blend into the background.

  Which was laughable.

  The man simply did not blend in.

  While she’d fully admit to being smitten, acknowledging his raw presence wasn’t about attraction. It was about the simple fact that Landon McGee was an impressive, imposing figure in his silence. She’d seen it from the first moment, when she’d arrived to find him sprawled in one of the lobby chairs with his computer perched on his lap, and the impressions had only grown since then.

  The tall build with the broad shoulders. The quiet calm, even in the face of a swirling storm. And the subtle, determined sense of forward movement, even as he looked as still as a lake at dawn.

  He was a puzzle. Even though he’d let her in, she couldn’t shake the sense that he’d buck and claw if she attempted to put too many of the pieces together.

  Dismissing those thoughts and the surprisingly bleak wind they blew through her chest, Daphne left Landon and his family to their quiet moments. Their low conversation whispered from the front area, but in the still of Sunday afternoon she had an opportunity to observe the larger loft space without distraction.

  The same line of computers she’d catalogued on Wednesday sat like soldiers all along the tables that served as workstations. There were three rows in all, each seating about ten, based on the current design. There was room for more people, but the space now felt orderly. Add on the natural light that flooded the area with warmth, and it made for an appealing picture.

  She’d already checked the doors, and nothing appeared broken. The cameras would come next, but based on the lack of information they’d provided earlier in the week, she didn’t have high hopes of discovering much useful detail.

  Which left the questions.

  Kelsey, the young designer who’d called in the break-in, sat with her boyfriend, huddled at the end of the third row of desks. Her bohemian clothes were at direct odds with Daphne’s bright summer print dress, but if she even noticed a woman in a sundress was questioning her, she didn’t acknowledge it when Daphne pulled out a seat beside her.

  “Can you walk me through what happened?”

  “Pete and I were walking home from brunch and I wanted to show him a project I was working on. I had a big break on Friday in the design, and I’ve been itching to get back to it, but it’s the weekend and with one thing after another . . .” She turned to Pete, her eyes wide. “Oh my God! What if we’d walked in when the guy was here?”

  “You think it was a guy?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” The vigorous head nods faded as Kelsey seemed to reconsider the question. “I mean, yeah.”

  “Why? Any specific impression?”

  “No. I mean, it’s stereotypical, but nothing stands out that makes me think it’s a man.” She turned to her boyfriend as if for reassurance. “You feel it’s a guy, though? Don’t you feel it, Pete?”

  He shrugged, his concern more for the flustered Kelsey than the nameless, faceless intruder who’d returned the stolen items.

  Daphne asked a few more questions, took down contact info for Kelsey and Pete, and let them go on their way. Other than their ill-timed arrival, it was more than obvious the two of them weren’t involved in whatever had happened.

  Landon came up behind her as she scribbled the last of her notes from the quick interview. “Kelsey’s a sweetheart. Good worker, keeps her head down. Ben’s been really pleased with her.”

  Daphne heard the subtle notes of defensiveness layered in and around the sweetheart description and couldn’t resist a subtle poke at Landon. “A sweetheart, is she? Should Pete be worried?”

  “She’s a kid.”

  “Relax, Ace. I’m just giving you a hard time.”

  He did as she ordered, the tight lines that bracketed his mouth fading when he finally registered she was teasing. “Kelsey’s not a troublemaker is all I’m trying to say.”

  “And who is Ben?”

  “One of the other owners who rents space here. He hired Kelsey last year, and she’s moved up quickly. He thinks the world of her.”

  “Enough that he’d ask her to come in here and mess up a few of your things? Put your servers back?”

  Landon’s still waters rippled at the query. “What? No!”

  “It’s a logical question. No sign of forced entry, and people here understand what your computer equipment holds.”

  “My suitemates aren’t involved in this.”

  She’d never fully mastered the tactic, but Daphne found that the ability to divert questions to others often paid dividends. The sheer defense—and Landon’s obvious inability to see his colleagues as involved in the break-in—was helpful.

  “I don’t think Kelsey did it either.” Daphne closed her small notebook as if to punctuate that point.

  “Damn right.” His gaze grew speculative. “But nicely done, Detective.”

  “It’s my job.” She laid a soft hand on his forearm. “And that sort of defense of another person goes a long way.”

  “I notice you haven’t lumped me in with this morning’s break-in. You don’t think I’m involved?” Although his face remained impassive, something dark and wicked flickered to life in his eyes.

  “I know what you were doing this morning.”

  He edged in closer, the heat of his body searing hers. “You don’t think I could have hired someone?”

  Daphne got into the game, even as that need he hadn’t fully sated flared to life once more. “It’s an interesting strategy. Set the break-in, then seduce the cop assigned. I have to say, you should be awfully glad you didn’t get Wilson.”

  “Who’s Wilson?”

  “The other detective on duty last Wednesday morning. He has a fondness for donuts and polyester. Deeply seducible, if you ask me.”

  “Witch.”

  Satisfied she had the upper hand and still reveling in the warmth of his body, she returned to the break-in. “What I can’t figure out is why anyone would risk coming back here. You said yourself the loss of the servers wasn’t the end of the world. Neither is it a particularly expensive loss. Yet now you have them back. Someone had to break in in order to do that.”

  Their quiet moment vanished, Landon glanced toward his family, still milling around the front area. “With a new problem tacked right on top of them.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would she do it?” Landon asked. His large frame seemed to electrify at the words, nervous energy spilling from him as he wandered around the workstations nearby.

  She watched him, curious when he straightened chairs and nudged the limited desktop clutter into place. “You’re in Camp Gretchen, too?”

  “It’s hard to think otherwise.” Before she could say anything, Landon added, “Which is obviously the point.”

  Daphne avoided saying too much, anxious to keep a suitable distance between their personal relationship and the professional. She’d already crossed a dangerous line with the flirtation, and she needed to keep firm control of the situation.

  It was the first time she’d attended a crime scene with someone other than a cop. She was already too aware of him—and much too aware of what they’d shared a few short hours before, so she held back, keeping as much emotional distance as she could until they got out of there.

  “She’ll be fully questioned.”

  Landon glanced back once more at his family. “And will likely come back and torment my mother once more, making more noise about how unfit for the borough presidency she is.”

  “Your mom’s tough. She’ll weather it.”

  “She’s tough, but this is something else entirely.”

  “Maybe that’s the point.” The idea spilled out, unrefined and still full of holes. But even with the gaps, something jingled. “Has Gretchen ever tried to contact your mother before this?”

  “No.” Landon stopped, considered. “I don’t think so, but we’d need to ask her. Why?”

  “What if there was something that started this? So
me sort of personal embarrassment or some discovery?”

  “I don’t think it was a secret her husband was cheating on her.”

  “No, but maybe she discovered something. Letters or personal items. He’s dead, but what if she discovered something left behind?”

  “So why come after me, then?”

  “You’re easy.” She finally got a smile out of him with those words, along with a slow lift of his eyebrows that sent a sizzle of need coursing through her body. “Behave.”

  “If you insist.”

  She didn’t insist, but God, how easy it was to drop straight back into the banter and the innuendo.

  “What I mean is that it would be hard to go after Nick’s bar. Big public place that always has people hanging around. And Fender? He’s a mechanic, right?”

  “No one messes with Fender.”

  “It’s not about messing with him, or you, for that matter. It’s about messing with your mother, and the easiest way to do that is to find the quickest entry point. A quiet office loft is that entry point.” Another thought reared up, replacing all that had come before.

  It was so clear—so obvious. And she’d missed it from the start.

  “Landon. Your servers. Are you hosting your mother’s campaign for borough president?”

  The matched look of surprise on his face was all she needed.

  “Let me take a look.” Landon was already reaching for the bagged servers when Daphne stopped him, her hand on his forearm.

  “I can’t unbag those,” she said. “They’re evidence.”

  “They have information,” he insisted. “And they’re mine.”

  Daphne had practically raced him to the front of the office where the servers lay on top of the reception desk, a mountain both of them were determined to conquer. “Right now, they’re police property and you need to leave them alone.”

  The impasse was obvious, and Landon fought off the subtle sense of being overpowered even as he took a few steps back. The servers were his, damn it. He had a right to look them over.

  And Daphne was equally adamant he wasn’t to touch them.

  Her hand fell away, and he resisted putting too much meaning on the gesture. He focused instead on his property. The cop who’d helped Daphne when they’d first arrived had carefully bagged the servers in sealed plastic evidence bags, along with Gretchen’s calling cards. All three pieces had held little immediate interest until he found he couldn’t touch any of them.

  If that was a surprise, it was even more surprising to realize the second break-in left him more irritated and frustrated than the first. His place of business had been breached, and while he’d managed to get past that earlier in the week, the second assault bothered him even more.

  How had he become the object of all of this? And why?

  “We’ll do a quick check for prints, and then digital forensics will take a look at them. I’m not saying you can’t have a crack at them, but this is still an investigation. One that’s potentially just ratcheted up to involve someone running for political office.”

  Landon had seen the change come over Daphne as soon as she’d made the connection on his servers and his mother’s campaign. She’d been effective and efficient from the moment they’d walked in, but now she was all cop. Hard and unyielding.

  He’d be turned on if he wasn’t so pissed she was in his way.

  “So who made the connection between Landon and Gretchen?” Nick interrupted them, his easygoing manner at odds with the tension that flared between Landon and Daphne.

  His brother was a bright man, but the realities of the digital world weren’t a part of Nick’s day-to-day. “The Internet is a marvelous digital cave of wonders. And your celebrity status means we’re not hard to find.”

  “Me?”

  Nick’s eyes widened, and it was Emma’s turn to soothe. Her hand slipped in his as she came to stand beside him.

  Partners.

  His brother had found his partner. The person who’d journey with him through life, side by side.

  Thoughts of that morning with Daphne rose up and gripped Landon with tight fists. Those lost hours in her arms, a mix of anger and need, sadness and the sheer joy of the joining of their bodies. There were other images, as fleeting as the last vestiges of a dream, where he could see the two of them standing side by side.

  Hand in hand in some future where that could be possible.

  But those images faded under the sheer weight of his problems and his past. And then they vanished in the chasm that spread out between them.

  She had a job to do and had made it abundantly clear that came first. She’d hadn’t hidden her determination, or tossed him some pithy lines of bullshit. She’d brought Amber back into his life. And even now she stood in the way of his getting answers.

  She was all cop.

  He’d be lying if he didn’t acknowledge his appreciation for her dedication and hard work. He’d always valued ambition and had plenty of his own. But he wanted her on his side, too.

  Whether it was because the reality of Amber McGee was so fresh, or because his memories of her needed little encouragement to surface, Landon didn’t know. But he still remembered that bleak feeling when his mother had signed the papers, willingly relinquishing parental rights to Louisa Mills.

  He knew it was the right thing. Even at ten, he’d understood that. And he wanted to live with Mama Lou and have her adopt him.

  But it still hurt.

  And somewhere way down deep, it shocked him to realize Daphne Rossi had the power to do hurt him too.

  Landon hadn’t managed to shake off his morose mood. What dogged him all afternoon had become a dragging pall as day moved into evening. Daphne had taken the equipment and the calling card and headed for the precinct, leaving him at his office with his mother, Nick, Emma, and a heap of theories about what had really happened.

  Emma had finally diverted the conversation to a silly story about Mrs. Weston’s grandson, but it hadn’t done much to change the trajectory of Landon’s thoughts. The end of amateur detective hour had given him an excuse to escape for home, but that hadn’t proven any more enlightening or enjoyable.

  Memories of Daphne and their explosive morning together weren’t far from his mind, slowly driving him crazy. The long lines of her body and how she’d flowed over him, around him as they made love haunted him, his skin still sensitive from the memory of her. He itched to feel that soft skin once more—to cup her lush breasts in his hands as his thumbs caressed her nipples to points. His body hardened with need as he imagined once again burying himself inside her warmth, her inner muscles tightening around him as she found her own release.

  He wanted her. Desperately. Madly.

  And layered beneath it all was a not-so-subtle annoyance that she’d left him to his evening, taking his property without little more than a determined good-bye.

  Which left him horny, angry, and about as friendly as a snake.

  He was in such a shitty mood he almost ignored the hard, insistent knock on his door until Fender hollered from the other side. “Open up, L!”

  Landon dragged his ass off the couch and marched for the door, covering the short distance in a few strides. His brother stood on the other side, his usual uniform of black T-shirt and jeans capped off by a brand new ball cap advertising the weekend’s race. “Thought you were up at the Glen?”

  “I finished up and headed home.”

  “You never head home early.”

  Fender shrugged, his glass-green eyes sharp in the fluorescent lights of the apartment building’s hallway. “My brother doesn’t usually have two break-ins in less than a week. It was time to come home.”

  Landon moved back to let Fender in and then closed the door on the bright hallway lights. A ball game echoed from the living room and Fender had already headed toward the apartment’s galley kitchen and the beer that was perpetually stocked in the fridge. “You need a freshie?”

  “Sure.”

  The dist
inct sound of two popped tops quickly followed, then Fender beelined for the sectional that dominated the living room. “So what happened today? Nick gave me a bit of the details. Said something about Bitch Reynolds being involved.”

  “So it seems.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means someone returned my shit, which the cops promptly took again, and left Gretchen Reynolds’s calling card smack on top of it.”

  “Which are you really mad about?”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Exactly what I asked. You pissed about the card or the cops?” Fender took a long swig of his beer. “Or one cop in particular?”

  “It’s my stuff. And I know how to run details on it. Find out if it was tampered with.”

  Fender snagged the remote and muted the ball game. “So you do that after the cops give you the servers back.”

  “It’s my stuff.”

  “And they’re now honor bound to investigate it because of Mom’s borough bid.”

  “Nick did fill you in.”

  “Why don’t you give me your version?”

  Landon did just that, outlining what he believed and what Daphne now suspected. The telling was quick, but despite having advance notice from Nick, Fender took it all in, quietly nodding and asking clarifying questions where he needed them.

  Calm. Cool. Assessing. The guy had been a badass since birth, and nothing seemed to ruffle him.

  Which made the anger—when it finally came—the equivalent of an explosion.

  “Fucking bitch. And we thought she’d gone away.”

  “She’s got a vendetta.”

  “Because of something that happened twenty-five years ago? That’s an awful long time to stew in your own mental bullshit.”

  “Some things don’t go away, no matter how much time we take or how far away we believe them to be.” Or how deep you wade in mental bullshit.

  The anger subsided in a heartbeat, Fender’s attention caught. “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.”